Mary Anne Barkhouse: Le rêve aux loups

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Mary Anne Barkhouse, "Treats for Coyote (detail)," 2017

Courtesy the artist and the Koffler Gallery, Toronto. Photo by Rafael Goldchain.

Public Opening Reception: Friday, September 15, 6-10pm

Artist Talks:r/Evolution: Exhibition Tour with Jennifer Rudder and Mary Anne BarkhouseFriday 10 November, 7-8:30pm, free Join curator Jennifer Rudder and artist Mary Anne Barkhouse as they address historical and contemporary notions around land from a Western and Indigenous point of view. 

Esker Foundation presents the first solo exhibition in Alberta of work by Kwakiutl artist Mary Anne Barkhouse. The largest survey exhibition of Barkhouse's work to date, Le rêve aux loups is guest curated by Jennifer Rudder − with an earlier iteration of the exhibition originating at the Koffler Gallery, Toronto. At Esker Foundation the exhibition is greatly expanded upon and reimagined, bringing together for the first time, works from major museum collections along with three new commissions.The artistic practice of Mary Anne Barkhouse is deeply engaged with environmental and indigenous issues, with the visual iconography of animals playing a central role. Barkhouse situates her work between two worlds, the human and the natural. She employs the beaver, raven, wolf, and coyote as symbols of the ability to adapt and persist, regenerate and repair – even throughout endless incursions into their environs.

“Barkhouse’s bi-coastal heritage taught her the individual and communal importance of stewardship of the land. She spent alternate summers fishing on the Pacific Ocean with her Kwakiutl grandfather, Fred Cook − a fisherman, logger, and carpenter − and looking after the animals close to the Atlantic Ocean with her German settler grandfather, Alfred Barkhouse − a farmer in Nova Scotia. [She]…employs a visual iconography of animals − including the owl, wolf, bat, and coyote − both as symbols of persistence, resilience, and regeneration, and as a way to address her commitment to the active Kwakiutl and farming practices of conservation and sustainability.” – Jennifer Rudder, Guest Curator.

Barkhouse invokes the animal inhabitants of the land at home in the flamboyant interiors of the Louis XIV of France, in artworks that reveal the transitory nature of empire, highlighting both the triumphs and betrayals that delineate history north of the 49th parallel. The works also reflect on our skewed experience of nature, treated as a resource for human needs rather than an ecosystem with its own intrinsic value. Indeed, the animals have taken over the parlour, begging the questions: “Who owns this land?” and “Who is the intruder?”